Self-exposure – a journalist out of depth

Book Review: The Altenberg 16: An Exposé of the Evolution Industry by Suzan Mazur.

Price: US$16.50; NZ$35.oo
Perfect Paperback: 376 pages
Publisher: North Atlantic Books (February 9, 2010); Scoop Media Publishing
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1556439245
ISBN-13: 978-1556439247
Journalist Suzan Mazur created a small flurry several years ago with articles on a planned scientific meeting (The 18th Altenberg Workshop in Theoretical [...]

Ideological infections

Book Review: The God Virus: How religion infects our lives and culture by Darrel W. Ray
Price: US$12.91
Perfect Paperback: 241 pages
Publisher: IPC Press; First edition (December 5, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0970950519
ISBN-13: 978-0970950512
The virus metaphor has been extremely useful in computing. The parallel with biological viruses is close so the word provides an accurate but [...]

I thought the award for mistakes was mine!

Glacier-gate – the current feeding frenzy for climate change deniers brought back memories.
Any publishing scientist will have experienced the problem of errors getting through the review and checking process. Of course you notice them immediately when you proudly read through you masterpiece in the print journal.
However, I burst out laughing when I read this  post [...]

Atheists provoke a reaction

This one had to come, I guess.
For a while now there have been videos circulated of a scene from the 2004 film Downfall where Hilter “looses it.” They have been dubbed to produce parodies supporting different viewpoints – some I sympathise with (see Peer review – an emotional roller coaster), others I don’t.

But the silly [...]

No gods required

Book Review: Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe by Greg M. Epstein

Price: US$17.15
Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: William Morrow (October 27, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0061670111
ISBN-13: 978-0061670114
With this title the book is obviously going to discuss morality. Fortunately it quickly disposes of the question of “whether we can be good without God” early in [...]

Understanding the “multiverse”

Book review: In Search of the Multiverse by John Gribbin
Price: NZ$55
Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: Allen Lane (August 27, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1846141133
ISBN-13: 978-1846141133

These days when people talk about the “multiverse” they usually mean the idea that our “universe” is just part of a larger, perhaps unending, collection of “universes.” And that these different universes may have different [...]

A good climate change book

I have been reading Andy Reisenger’s book Climate Change 101. It’s obviously aimed at students and researchers – after all it’s subtitled “An educational resource.”
However for anyone with a scientific interest in the subject it’s certainly very readable.
I think the interested layman would find the book useful. It is an authoritative and reliable source for [...]

Scientific method and the “supernatural”

This is a repeat of a post from over 2 years ago:
Richard Dawkins TV series Enemies of Reason has caused some discussion about the relationship of science to the supernatural. This also comes up in discussions of the nature of science, the science/religion conflict and the motivation behind intelligent design and creationism. Some of the [...]

Belief, knowledge and science

This is a repeat of a post from 18 months back:
A pernicious feature of current attacks on science is the promulgation of the idea that scientific knowledge is “just a belief.” That it has no more validity than any other belief. That non-scientific beliefs should be given the same status or legitimacy as scientific theory.
This [...]

Testimony of non-believers

Recently I reviewed the book 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists by Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk (see Why We Are Atheists). An interesting follow-up to that book is a  talk back show (Talk back: the disbelievers) which played on ABC National radio a few days ago. This involved Russell Blackford (Co-editor, 50 [...]